Quotes about the world
page 10

“I prefer to win titles with the team ahead of individual awards or scoring more goals than anyone else. I'm more worried about being a good person than being the best football player in the world. When all this is over, what are you left with? When I retire, I hope I am remembered for being a decent guy.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Hope, Guy, Football, Personality

“You can't save the world… save YOUR heart. Be a catalyst & create a life
where you are powerful. Rebel. Be happy & allow others happiness.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Life, Happiness, Heart

“The great honor of Christianity, its incontestable merit, and the whole secret of its unprecedented and yet thoroughly legitimate triumph, lay in the fact that it appealed to that suffering and immense public to which the ancient world, a strict and cruel intellectual and political aristocracy, denied even the simplest rights of humanity. Otherwise it never could have spread.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

Dover edition, p 75
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

Secret, Suffering

“Hate the world and all that is in it. Hate all peace that comes from the flesh. Renounce this life, so that you may be alive to God.”

Anthony the Great (251–357) Christian saint, monk, and hermit

Saying 33, Page 8
From Apophthegmata Patrum

Life, God, Hate, Peace

“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

As quoted in Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science (1960) by René Jules Dubos, Ch. 3 : Pasteur in Action

Intelligence, Knowledge, Science, Country

“For any comedian, your life informs your point of view, the way you see the world. My comedy comes through the prism of race or class, because those are two worlds that collided for me growing up. And I guess that’s served me well, because those themes cross over countries and continents. We’re all still dealing with those issues today.”

Trevor Noah (1984) South African comedian

On how his upbringing informs his comedy in “Life’s Work: An Interview with Trevor Noah” https://hbr.org/2018/09/lifes-work-an-interview-with-trevor-noah in Harvard Business Review (September-October, 2018) Personal life

Life, Way, Country

“Have I done the world good, or have I added a menace?”

Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) Italian inventor and radio pioneer

Marconi, 1934: cited in Raboy, Marc (2016) The Man Who Networked the World, p. 631 https://books.google.com/books?id=qn59DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA631&lpg=PA631#v=onepage&q&f=false|Marconi:

“I think success is when you are confronted with utter defeat of your world, your intimacy, your ideas, your public picture, your heritage, your previous achievements. When in one moment it looks like there is one, and nothing that helps you. When almost every look is also a look of doubt, when you yourself put everything under the question mark. When all the illusions about yourself fall, illusions about your surroundings, about people, about faith and religion, about flags, about objects of love and how much are you in love…and then, in that moment of personal and private holocaust, of that ocean of pain looking like all inner strength faded away, and there is no right for excuses about your existence. When at that moment you rise and keep moving forward, you start and you lead a creative and productive life. Yes, I think that is objective strength and power.”

Alfred Freddy Krupa (1971) Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art m…

Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s

Love, Life, Pain, People

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com begins: Misattributed

God, Happiness, People, Motivation

“There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. … Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.
A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)

Universe

“Many experiments with the Technology of Light are being undertaken in Russia. This is because the Space Brothers set up a community in that country 15 years ago. Russia was chosen because it was such a closed society, where commercial pressures did not affect scientific research. Today, says Maitreya, the Russians are well ahead of the rest of the world in this field. That is why Russia leads the way in calling for arms reductions.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Share International Magazine

Way, Communication, Light, Country

“Mankind will soon see that there is no alternative to sharing the produce of the world. Every other method has been tried and failed, and has led inevitably to war, suffering, degradation and misery.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

War, Suffering

“I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, pefect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Women, Men, God, People

“There is the world for you. Beauty, true beauty, is intangible. It is in the eye of the beholder. Something that we can lose at any moment, and the more you examine it, the more illusive it becomes. True happiness is virtue, and virtue is predicated on knowledge and righteous conduct.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

in The Alchemist of Happiness

Happiness, Beauty, Knowledge

“The great disadvantage, and advantage, of the small urban bourgeois is his limited outlook. He sees the world as a middle-class world, and everything outside, these limits is either laughable or slightly wicked.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

A Collection of Essays, pp. 65-66
Charles Dickens (1939)

“Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself—to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

He liked to think of the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself forever.
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 10

Money, Self-confidence

“He would only drift and sink, drift and sink, like the others of his family; but worse than them - down, down into some dreadful sub-world that as yet he could only dimly imagine. It was what he had chosen when he declared war on money. Serve the money-god or go under; there is no other rule.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 7

Money, God, War, Family

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Henry Beston book The Outermost House

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2

Life, Fate, Nature, Knowledge

“We suppress, reject, deny and disown the aspects that make us vulnerable or get us disapproved of in the world. By doing this, they become subconscious. They are buried outside of our awareness and we don't know they even exist, even though they tend to be visible to other people around us.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

People, Making love

“To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool than to discover who is a clever man.”

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) French diplomat

Reported in, C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. (1917).

Fools

“You can play a role in the shaping of tomorrow’s world by asking yourself questions like, “What kind of world do I want to live in?” and “What does democracy mean to me?””

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

There are many other options of organization for the future than those typically discussed today... In order to accomplish this task one must be free of bias and nationalism, and reflect those qualities in the design of policies. How would you approach that? This is a difficult project requiring input from many disciplines.
Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 6-7

Democracy, Question

“I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

People, Fear, Feeling, Coffee

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world. For those of us able to read this magazine, it is different. We can do something to preserve our planet.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"The Power of One", TIME Magazine (26 August 2002) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003125,00.html

Reading, Future

“Conspiracy theories (actually: hypotheses) are comforting, anthropocentric, affirming constructs. They assume that someone runs the world, that someone is in control. The sad truth is that nobody is in control. That's way more terrifying.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Twitter https://twitter.com/johannes_mono/status/1250039288517050369

Truth, Sadness, Way

“Sometimes defining friendship can be simple. If your heart still aches after someone has passed, then you were a true and close friend. They may have physically left this world, but they still walk among us in our hearts.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2018

Friendship, Heart

“And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.”

George Orwell book A Hanging

Source: "A Hanging", in The Adelphi (August 1931)

Life, Men, Food, Feeling

“We are seeing a globalization of indifference. There is a culture of conflict, which makes us think only of ourselves. Makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are also insubstantial. We've become used to the suffering of others. It doesn't affect me. No one in our world feels responsible. Who is responsible for the blood of our…”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Source: Movie The Two Popes, Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis

Love, Making love, Feeling, Thinking

“Be different than the world, otherwise, there are lots of stars in the sky.”

Lucky Gupta (1998) Internet celebrity

2020

Star

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Depressing

“I'm still convinced good will defeat evil, and the world will be restored, humanity will be judged, and justice will be made, call me crazy, but it's because I'm crazy enough to believe.”

Angelo Vulpini (2003) Venezuelan recording artist

Source: Posted on instagram @angelovulpini, September 2nd, 2021. https://www.instagram.com/p/CTVVtsfrRvh/

Source: https://quotepark.com/suggestions/create-quote/author/?originator_name=Angelo%20Vulpini

Justice, Evil

“The world hates a hypocrite. You cannot want a safe, secure, moral environment for White children, then act like you had no idea what the word noble means.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Drugs and Governments
Focus Fourteen

Hate, Children, Idea

“Everyone's dream – the contest of fruits of creativity in the world, which has attained unity through wisdom.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Wisdom, Dreams

“With courage and purpose, with humility and with hope, with faith in the promise of tomorrow, let us march straightforward together, enduring allies in the cause of a world that is more peaceful, more prosperous, and more just.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Remarks by the President to Parliament in London, United Kingdom (May 2011)

Peace, Faith, Hope, Courage

“At school, you have geniuses who can only memorise the facts. Reading and memorising books from cover to cover, without any promise of creativity or of proposing your new idea to the world.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Books, School, Idea, Reading

“The adaptation of spirituality is the only solution to the problems of the world. We must go beyond corporeal desires.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Problem

“The biggest battle than all the world wars put together is when the mind wants something while the body craves for something else as well.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

War

“Without wisdom, you will not peacefully enjoy this wealth in the world. You will have no idea what to do with it in the first place.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Wisdom, Idea, Wealth

“Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”

Pope Pius XII (1876–1958) 260th Pope of the Catholic Church

Radio Message of His Holiness Pius XII to Participants in the National Catechetical Congress of the United States in Boston https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/speeches/1946/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19461026_congresso-catechistico-naz.html, from Castel Gandolfo on Saturday, 26 October 1946

Men, Sense

“Venice by moonlight is an enchanted city; the floods of silver light upon the moresco architecture, the perfect absence of all harsh sounds of carts and carriages, the never-ceasing music on the waters, produced an effect on the mind which cannot be experienced, I am sure, in any other city in the world.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (c. 8 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume. I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 108

Music, Light, Water, Perfection

“Head of Christ by Morales, exactly as in the description in the pseudo letter of the Roman Proconsul. Morales well entitled to his surname of Divino... [T]he auburn locks seem only prevented from growing over the countenance by the moiety of the star which forms the glory: everything which can even be conceived as necessary to the formation of a face of perfect beauty, but nothing earthly in the appearance. You could not mistake the head for an Apollo or an Adonis. The eyes, beaming with human beauty, are nevertheless bright with the effulgence of celestial light, and fixed upon no particular object. They seem looking on the world. The nose is exquisitely formed, and the flesh tints seem immortal.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Diary entry while in Aix (c. 16 August 1824), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), pp. 52-53

Beauty, Star, Light, Appearance

“The women who changed the world never needed to show anything other than their own intelligence.”

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) Italian neurologist

Source: Cited in Addio a Rita Levi Montalcini, scienziata e donna straordinaria http://www.panorama.it/scienza/rita-levi-montalcini-morta/, Panorama.it, 30 dicembre 2012.

Women, Intelligence, Change

“It is not enough to just think about the changes one would wish to see around oneself, when putting a positive and compassionate thought into action could make all the difference in the world.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Thinking, Change

“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Life, Dependency

“Sorry I didn't save the world, my friend
I was too busy buildin' mine again
I choose me, I'm sorry”

Kendrick Lamar (1987) American rapper, songwriter and record producer from California

Mirror
Song lyrics, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022)

Business

“(Engr. Abah Sule favorite speech)1. Give birth to yourself. 2. Others are feeling the same. 3. As a man you got to be strong. 4. Love the one you are with, 5. Where challenges are important, 6. to live is the hardest, to die is the simplest. 7. Peace of mind, long life, 8. Can't be done without you. 9. Do what's real. 10. Live the world and live your life.”

Engr.Abah Sule

Love, Life, Peace, Feeling

“The journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Context: PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.
GANDALF: No. No, it isn't.

Death

This quote waiting for review.

“The most revealing aspect of the World Cup is not that it hides social conflicts, but that it shows which of them can coexist comfortably with grand global celebrations.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Común Magazine.
https://revistacomun.com/blog/cuando-el-mundial-dejo-de-representar-al-mundo/

“You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don't play together the club won't be worth a dime.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter X," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), p. 135; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter X: Great Individual Stars Worth Little Without Team Play; Signs and How They Operate, https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=c0sbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AUsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4554%2C1154246 The Pittsburgh Press (January 18, 1929), p. 45 Context: Baseball always has been and always will be a game demanding team play. You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don't play together the club won't be worth a dime.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

A comment he made in persuading John Sculley to become Apple's CEO, as quoted in Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple: A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (1987) by John Sculley and John A. Byrne
1980s

Life, Water, Change, Chance

“One world was not enough for two like me and you.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 Vols.

Books, Fools, Reading

“After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second glass you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Said about Absinthe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe. Quoted in “Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author" by Ada Leverson (London: Duckworth, 1930)

“The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!”

Robert Browning Pippa Passes

Part I, line 221.
Source: Pippa Passes (1841)

God, Spring

“Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Women, Men, Time

“There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.”

Albert Ellis (1913–2007) American psychologist

“All I need is a sheet of paper
and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“What I feel for you can’t be conveyed in phrasal combinations; It either screams out loud or stays painfully silent but I promise — it beats words. It beats worlds.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Feeling

“Dogs are gonna take over the world. It's a known fact for those who believe it, kinda like the Bible.”

Green Day

Dogs

“The aspiration to save the world is a morbid phenomenon of today's youth.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Youth

“What worries me about religion is that it teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding the world they live in.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Heart Of The Matter: God Under The Microscope | BBC (1996)
Variant: [... ] one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.
Source: The God Delusion

People, Religion, Understanding

“as small as a world and as large as alone
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Variant: For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.
Source: 100 Selected Poems

Sea

“His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Life, Nature

“You cannot live with a paw in each world.”

Erin Hunter

Source: Into the Wild

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Feeling, Thinking, Suffering

“… I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made…”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

Peace, Peaceful

“If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple.”

Tariq Ali (1943) British Pakistani writer, journalist, and historian

“But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“You'll never understand the way the worlds really work until you surround yourself with people from all sorts of weird backgrounds.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga, Vol. 6

People, Way, Understanding

“The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Feeling

“We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)
Context: We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.
Context: I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here — they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

Evil

“Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Youth

“Make ethical choices in what we buy, do, and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws.”

Marc Bekoff (1945) American biologist

Source: Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect

Law, Nature, Change, Animals

“I am my world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

The microcosm.
5.63
Original German: Ich bin meine welt (Der Mikrokosmos.)
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916
Variant: Man is the microcosm:
I am my world.

“We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Men, Reading

“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

Du kannst Dich zurückhalten von den Leiden der Welt, das ist Dir freigestellt und entspricht Deiner Natur, aber vielleicht ist gerade dieses Zurückhalten das einzige Leid, das Du vermeiden könntest.
104
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Nature, Suffering

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Knowledge, Reality, Universe, Change

“The voice so filled with nostalgia that you could almost see the memories floating through the blue smoke, memories not only of music and joy and youth, but perhaps, of dreams. They listened to the music, each hearing it in his own way, feeling relaxed and a part of the music, a part of each other, and almost a part of the world.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Youth, Dreams, Music, Way

“Be sure to enjoy language, experiment with ways of talking, be exuberant even when you don't feel like it because language can make your world a better place to live.”

Deborah Levy (1959) British writer

Source: Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places

Way, Feeling

“The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

People

“Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Evil

“Nights and days came and passed
And summer and winter
and the rain.
And it was good to be a little Island.
A part of the world
and a world of its own
All surrounded by the bright blue sea.”

Margaret Wise Brown book The Little Island

Variant: nights and days came and passed
and summer and winter
and the sun and the wind
and the rain.
and it was good to be a little island
a part of the world
and a world of its own
all surrounded by the bright blue sea.
Source: The Little Island

Winter, Summer, Parting, Sea

“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?”

Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy

Source: 1910s, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Knowledge

“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Stupidity

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846) Context: Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man who, like Satan, thought himself, for an instant, equal to God; but who now acknowledges, with Christian humility, that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom... There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

Life, Happiness, Wise, Hope

“The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

“Where your talents and the needs of the world cross; there lies your vocation.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: Your Faith is Your Fortune

People, Change

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."
~ (1919-), American writer, producer, humorist.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Christmas

“The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

God, Animals

“She lives in a world of her own – a world of – little glass ornaments…”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

“Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

People, Way, Literature, Reality

“Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you’re asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.

God, Time

“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears
is said to be seen in San Francisco.
It must be a delightful city and possess
all the attractions of the next world”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet